Chapter 018: The First Loop (1)

“Leon.” Mirai called out with a slightly tense expression; her friend—Yuki—wasn’t much better.

She had never expected that she would finally gain a little courage, and confess to her crush, albeit it was a bit flimsy but why not give it a shot? It was all for naught as she did that only for them to end up in this fantasy like situation where they were running for their lives from a strange beast with supernatural powers.

She never had any condition of heart burn before, but she felt it a little now.

Leon gave her a glance as he held them both in his arms as they hid in an empty classroom, the rumbling from outside getting more and more thunderous.

He tightened his grip, and they both tensed from the action. They both knew that the current circumstances couldn’t be left to fester for too long, or who knew what would happen to them all.

In fact, the only reason they were even alive right now was that Leon had forced them both of off the ground and just bolted away as fast as he could. The boy himself couldn’t help but regret it, he had no plans and just rushed into an empty classroom.

He couldn’t keep them safe, and he couldn’t leave them to die either, he felt a little helpless.

He tried to take a look outside one of the windows, but was quickly met with a particularly large eyeball. With a diameter of 5cm and eyes that seemed to contain very essence of the earth with it’s deep brown and green colors.

The eyeball seemed to lack any reflections of any sort.

Leon bit his lip to force himself to stay calm, careful to not to spill blood in any way. He instinctively stopped breathing, and moving, staring straight into the eyes of the beast from where they all stood on their clothe or leather book-bags.

Standing on the ground wouldn’t work, the creature seemed to sense them on the earth, and it wasn’t because of vibration either, or it wasn’t always vibration.

He had already tested those possibilities by experimenting with rocks, bottles and other such things. Naturally it wasn’t very accurate, but it eliminated some possibilities which thereby increased their chances of survival.

‘Too little time, not enough to prepare.’ He couldn’t help but think this way, as the beast turned about but Leon wasn’t reassured, and didn’t sigh in relief like the two girls in his arms. He wasn’t calm, as he could never bet at ease in this situation but he could think straight.

As a basketball player and physical all-rounder, he knew his own body and so, as for what happened next, he didn’t hesitate to follow the sudden tensing of his muscles and the sudden adrenaline forcing itself into his veins.

His pupils contracted and before the beast could do anything, he leapt away with both of them in his arms.

The beast was awfully slow, but it’s attacks were blinding, like those fastballs in baseball. Leon could only be sure that if it hit them, they were dead. So with pure survival on his mind, he flew.

To hold onto two high school girls, with their healthy body weight, and throw them backward along with yourself with just your own strength, it could be seen that Leon’s strength as a high schooler wasn’t ordinary.

A moment later, a tail reinforced by earth-like structures slammed into the wall, destroying it with ease. Thankfully, due to the power in the blow, most, if not all debris that could have resulted in that clash had either turned into small sized rock or powder.

Half of the classroom wall had collapsed, allowing for the nearly 3 meter long beast to wad through unhindered. Mirai and Yuki nearly screamed, but recalling what Leon had told them to do earlier, they both covered their mouths before they could do so.

As they looked at the now spacious classroom “entrance” that was about 10 meters in length, they’re eyes couldn’t help but light up in joy for a few moments. Leon on the other hand, look at all the dust that had accumulated on the floor, his face grim but thankful.

“Don’t step on the ground, only the backpacks or books, even the table and chairs,” Leon said with a soft voice, not concerned about the beast hearing him.

It was both blind and deaf.

At least, that was how it seemed… Not everything could be confirmed, being cautious was a reasonable action.

Recognizing the familiar words, both Mirai and Yuki tensed, looking at the amount of dust that accumulated there and hurriedly checked themselves only to sigh in relief.

Thankfully, dust didn’t fall on them.

A the same time, they all reevaluated the beast in front of them. It didn’t seem as dumb as before, and even had some cunning to it.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

If the dust had fallen on them… would it matter of they stood on the ground or not?

Just like this, man and magic beast stood in a stagnant face-off.

The first to move was Leon. Taking the initiative; he assumed the stance of a basketball-er going to perform a three-pointer and shot the strange looking balloon in his hand toward the right eye of the strange, hippo like creature.

The balloon gracefully went through the air, and he waited patiently; a book-bag in hand as the balloon fell into an increasingly accurate arc toward the eye. Finally, it fell and the balloon exploded, splashing ink and paint all across the eye of the creature.

The moment that happened he swung the bag in his hand toward the underbelly of the beast, it slide on the ground smoothly due to the excess amount of dust and the force at which he threw it. Thereby, allowing the bag to easily go underneath the creature.

The schoolbag, filled with glass utilities and other eccentricities that created noise in abundance, while smoothly going across the ground, still came into contact with debris that caused it to sound out numerous times.

Despite this however, it had never veered of it’s trajectory or reduced in speed by much at all. It was as if the perfect path for it to pass relatively unhindered but also serving a purpose had been chosen.

Leon narrowed his eyes, waiting... and the other two girls also waited with him.

In an ideal situation, the beast would turn to check on what had conspired.

As both the paint balloon—something he and his friends were going to use to play later—and the bag, had been made to seem like they both came from a similar direction. One which wasn’t totally in opposite to where they all were, which was near the upper right corner of the room, but somewhat close to that range.

Why he had done this?

Leon thought that making it seem like it came from a complete opposite direction would make the beast think of just turning toward them.

After all, what you were trying to hide was what was most likely important, so the what might seem to be on the left might in actuality be on the right. Tricks like this can be solved with this thinking, and he really wasn’t willing to make such a mistake.

There was much thought put into this, as much as any over thinker could have under this period of time. But the reality proved that it was all ultimately useless...

As a few second later, the supernatural beast which was supposed to be exhibit supernatural characteristics reacted in an awfully slow manner. It opened it’s mouth...

“Cover your ears,” Leon said, his face tight. He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he had a faint premonition born from connected, fragmented references.

An animal of any kind, especially one in combat, opening it’s mouth was typically a telegraph of them in the process of roaring, or something along those lines. That roar of a supernatural beast would surely have harmful effects.

“Should we…?” While covering her ears, Mirai made a glance at the, quick large “doorway” that was the entirety of the space that was previously the wall and looked back to Leon.

Leon frowned, he was hesitating, and that wasn’t a good thing.

He had faced tense situations many times before; the last minute of a tied game in nationals, being down a lot of points with no hope of victory in sight, and being confessed to by girls he didn’t have a liking to but being unable to genuinely want to hurt their feelings.

None, of course, could compare to this nightmarish scenario.

As a high school boy, aged 16 and not experienced with the world in many ordinary ways, he had made somewhat complicated choices, but this time was different.

If it were only himself, he could put on a bravado and charge forward, not caring about his life and death. Bluffing to himself that he was braver than he was and that he was going to accomplish some great deed, even if he didn’t want anything like such great deeds in the first place.

But there were two girls here, two of his schoolmates and he couldn’t just recklessly spend their lives this way.

Leon sighed.

‘It’s unfortunate, but life gives me what it gives me. It is what it is, it is what it is…’ Leon breathed and repeated a mantra that was popularized by the guys on YouTube, hardened his will and made a decision.

Just then, the beast which had opened it’s mouth as if it were about to commit to some sort of attack on the trio, finally made it’s move.

It roared, but strangely although it’s neck seemed to bulge with intensity, with large colorful blood vessels popping out here and there. They were not hearing any sort of sound that could actually injure them in any sort of way.

At least, not to Leon himself—others were not so lucky.

“Ugh…!” Leon suddenly flinched, hearing the sound from a human female and with a quickness that nearly snapped his neck he turned to look at both Yuki and Mirai who were now in some sort of pain.

Their figures seemed to be emitting some type of ethereal glow, like stars...

“…” Stunned, Leon looked at the beast who seemed to have found it’s target and his expression hardened.

He was both grateful and regretful that he was preoccupied with thinking earlier, if he had so readily agreed with Mirai’s suggestion, there was no telling what would happen to them if there were sneaking by the beast who had such a search method.

Echolocation…

‘Blind and Deaf, I should have known that this beast had it, but it seems strange. It doesn’t work like how the bats do it, it seems like this is either something else, or this echolocation can only work with sounds it makes on it’s own.’ Leon racked his brain while trying to offer any comfort to the two girls, ‘Or maybe, I was just misunderstanding it and that’s really how echolocation works. Like some, super echolocation.’

Feeling the heat of the gaze of the beast, Leon promptly made a decision, grabbed the two girls and then immediately jumped off from the 3rd floor window.

“Hold on tight…!”